We go live with Atriuum on January 25, 2021. We have scrambled these past several weeks cleaning up some messes we had made in Concourse over the years in preparation for converting to Atriuum. I wish we had given ourselves more time. If your library is considering Atriuum, please give yourself plenty of time to "get your house in order." We chose to eliminate audiocassettes from our collection, and that took quite some time going through the deletion process for those items. We are still in the process of weeding through videotapes. We also needed to clean up our Patron List. All in all, we know we'll be more than satisfied with Atriuum, but, boy, are we tired right now.
Brian McCartney
First Baptist Church Griffin GA
Replies
I can totally relate. It was impossible for us to totally clean up our files because we no longer had any cooperation from L4u. A couple of years ago Power School acquired L4u and then orphaned it. It's been a nightmare. We started our patrons all over again -- everyone is getting new cards. There are three libraries on our campus -- the school library, my Church library, and a library for the teachers of our Weekday Children's Program. L4u mixed up all of the patrons and they couldn't be sorted so we just eliminated all of them and started over. I am just grateful that L4u didn't mix up all of our books. That would have been a REAL nightmare. We do have about 1000 books that didn't transfer because the files were corrupt. I'm just adding them in as I find them until we do inventory this summer.
I can relate to what you are going through.
What will happen, if you don't get the database cleaned up?
I won't be able to live that long but will give it the "old school try".
I feel your pain. I was a school librarian but now I'm the director of a public librarian. No one had taught the staff about subject cataloging and consistency in cataloging was not one of the rules of thumb. I had to teach them and then we had to correct a lot in the catalog. I made reports for the tasks and when it was done, I deleted them. I've created reports for staff to use on a regular basis in doing their jobs and this has been helpful because we can easily catch inconsistencies and mistakes.
Now the church library is going to switch to Atriuum Express, but I feel much more prepared to deal with any issues that come up during the process.
Rhonda Rolen
Brian, our church library also converted from Concourse to Atriuum in the fall of 2020. You are certainly correct about the importance of thoroughly preparing for the conversion. Even with all our preparation, like you, we continue to edit and correct patron and material records as needed. It is an ongoing process, but a worthwhile one. Hope all went well and you are now reaping the benefits of a job well done. BookSystems does a great job training and are available for tech support when needed. Take advantage of the videos and training links they gave you when you need a refresher.
Elizabeth Starkey
Mt Vernon Baptist Church
Boone, NC
Great advoce for anything we try to do!! Thanks!